


let it fade into something new

by darthtayter



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, observational abby, she doesn't really want to be here but she's trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 23:48:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8554486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthtayter/pseuds/darthtayter
Summary: Abby can't say she didn't see it coming. But she really, really wishes that she didn't.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't sleep so I wrote a thing.

Abby can’t say she didn’t see it coming.  It's not a hard thing to notice, it's almost painfully obvious, it's just that Abby is very distracted. 

All her dreams are coming true at once, so she's a little preoccupied to deal with or process it, but yeah, duh, she notices. Makes a mental note with a little exclamation point next to it for later. Holtzmann has become the little sister Abby never actually wanted but kind of enjoys now that she has her, and Erin being back has been an extra side-piece dream-within-a-dream-Inception kinda thing in and of itself, but she's not going to kid herself on this. 

It’s only a few days after Erin comes bursting back into Abby’s life (or what Erin probably considers bursting, which is just coming in through the door and attempting to exchange pleasantries) before Holtzmann’s doing that thing she does, crushing on someone like a puppy with ready access to open flame, all inappropriate licking and wiggling and exuberance and scorch marks on ceilings. Abby half-expects her to start chewing on Erin’s shoes. 

~~~

 

They're busy though, you know? They're proving the impossible, they're forming a ragtag band of lovable misfits, they're saving the world, and they're getting the kind of secret government grant moula that Abby thinks is probably not totally on the up-and-up. They're riding high and kicking ass and not taking names because they have everyone they need, and they always get their ghost. They have _tons_ of monogrammed clothing. 

When she gets to the firehouse in the mornings she's almost always the last one there, because Abby likes to arrive and have Erin be making her second mug of some kind of weird tea that she's trying, to have music pounding and the faint smell of burnt carbon drifting from the second floor, to have Patty (who has brought in what must be the world's most absurdly comfortable armchair, and they can't find another one anywhere because it has a weird Thai knockoff name that refuses all attempts at Googling, and this is kind of the only thing that sucks right now, so Abby can't really think about it) sitting between several piles of books that are so hyper-organized according to a system that they don't understand that the rest of them are all afraid to touch them at all.

It's a dream. It's a beautiful dream. Abby loses herself in it, but when she comes down from her cloud that is not silver-lined but is _all the way silver_ , she sees things, she does. Sees Holtzmann mostly, sees Holtz watching Erin, watching her write out equations, watching her take off her sweatshirt when the temperature rises, watching Erin hack up a gob of slime and burp in the back of the hearse while Patty slaps her back and calls her "pumpkin". And every single time these things happen, Holtzmann has the exact same expression on her face: doe eyes and parted lips, the same duck of her head every time she thinks she's been spotted. Which is very dangerous when they're driving.

 

~~~

 

 

Now that it’s been a few months, it's harder not to notice this stuff. Like Holtzmann saying things like "lickety-split" for absolutely no goddamn reason, and inserting a lot of weird pauses and pointed stares while she says them. Or how she's there almost all the time, slithering up under Erin's arm like a snake in mismatched socks, bobbing at her shoulder for attention. And, with a jolt of your-friend-is-gay-for-your-other-friend-and-it’s-worse-than-you-thought, Abby remembers faintly the first day, after Erin went home in her increasingly-stiff suit, after Abby'd put the video on youtube. She remembers Holtzmann watching over her shoulder as Abby frantically refreshes to look for a jump in the viewcount. Remembers her asking: " _Do you think she's going to come back_?"

Holtz comes up behind Abby sometimes after lunch arrives, and walks away with one egg roll in her mouth and one on each fist. Which wouldn't be weird, because Abby has been ordering extra egg rolls since Holtz started working with her, except for the fact that lately she always pauses at Erin's desk and then Erin has an egg roll too. 

Maybe it’s just Holtzmann joking around, Abby thinks desperately. Like, sure Holtz leaves Erin a lot of snacks on a sliding scale of acceptable edibility, but that's probably just because she likes leaving notes that say _eat me_ on them. And while she's at it, maybe Holtzmann sitting still for a _full entire hour_ (Abby has never, not in all the time she’s known Holtzmann, seen this happen) because Erin fell asleep on her at nine PM on movie night was just because Holtz was really into _Starship Troopers_.

“She likes her,” says Patty after Holtz falls asleep too, her arm wrapped around Erin’s shoulder, having performed the yawn-and-stretch maneuver before Abby and Patty’s very eyes. “Little Doc Brown’s got it bad.”

Abby doesn’t say anything.

“Erin’s that time traveling schoolmarm Mary Steenburgen on that train,” Patty adds helpfully. “In that hat.”

“Oh god,” says Abby.

“It’s _Back to the Future 3_ , Abby."

“No, I...I got that part.”

Erin snores. Holtz does too. Neither of them wake up, though.

 

~~~

 

 

Abby wants to just let it go, but again, she has an irritating urge to protect her fake little sister/adopted raccoon or whatever it is Holtzmann has become to her.

She doesn't really know how to go about it, and usually something important suddenly comes up, like a really just breathtaking Class 3 in Chelsea, or Patty's aunt sent her in with homemade goulash that is infinitely more breathtaking. One day though, it’s just her and Holtz in the firehouse, which is so rare that Abby isn’t sure when there’ll be another moment.

“You gotta stop this with Erin, Holtzy,” Abby blurts out. Holtz doesn’t move, and for a second Abby thinks she hasn’t heard her, but then she stands up from where she’s been welding, snaps her goggles on her forehead, and squints at Abby with eyes that look almost frighteningly pale, like now she’s an adopted raccoon with inverted coloring.

“Oh?” Holtzmann asks, shaking out her arms and rolling her neck on her shoulders.

“Look. There’s no way this ends well. Erin will break your heart one way or another. I had the platonic version and I really don't even recommend that.” This is easily the most awkward conversation she and Holtzmann have had since Abby found her asleep in the dumpster.

And Holtz nods all sad and bereft, hums like she believes her, even seems like she backs off Erin a little bit, but then two days later Patty is imitating Abby reaming out one of their old colleagues (fucker deserved it and more, whatever, and had his uppance come crashing into him in the form of a Class 4 poltergeist in his study). Erin is howling so hard that she’s crying, and Abby is begrudgingly laughing too, until she looks back at where Holtz is standing frozen, leaning over a work table at a ninety-degree angle with her jaw hanging slack, staring at Erin.

No one ever listens to Abby but what else is new?

 

~~~

 

Okay, so maybe Holtz has an idea in her head about how things will go and Abby can’t get her off of it. It’s happened before, like when she wanted to encase a nuclear reactor in a knapsack (“Awesome! But why?” “For camping!”), so Abby is just going to have to take the alternate route through the Erin Station.

“You need to tell Holtzmann you aren’t into her,” Abby tells Erin one afternoon when they’re alone in the kitchen, when Erin is making the inevitable switch from artisan teas to coffee so black that it’s oily.

“What? Oh. Wait. What?” Erin sputters. Maybe Abby should have waited till after the coffee.

“Come on. You know what she’s doing.” Even Erin isn’t that personally dense, but Erin _is_ that personally panicky, and Abby doesn’t want this to turn into another _I got us an interview, wait, where are you going for ten years?_ kind of thing. “Even Kevin might - no." 

It's only because Abby knows Erin so well that she can read the series of expressions that flits across her face: surprise, excitement, worry and relief, relief that she noticed something that turned out to be real that someone else is validating.

It’s something Abby never understood with Erin, and that’s sort of why everything disintegrated in the first place.

“Just let her down gently, okay?” Abby asks, herself being very gentle.

“Oh yes. Yes I should definitely do that. Any minute now,” Erin says, stirring her mug so hard that coffee splatters onto her shoes.

There’s guacamole from the place on 36th for lunch that day, so Abby doesn’t worry about this as much as she should have.

 

~~~

 

Holtzmann is Holtzmann. She keeps bringing Erin things, food and interesting garbage, and once a daisy that she found in a crack in the sidewalk. Abby keeps waiting for Erin to let her down (gently!), but what actually happens is that Erin is always up there. Talking animatedly to her, or sitting next to her, or working in collaborative silence with her. Holtz just ramps it up, the only thing she knows how to do in life. Erin starts bringing her a mug of whatever weird tea she’s on every morning, and sometimes she doesn’t come back downstairs until lunch.

Patty is no help, because she just started a three book series on the draft riots, so Abby’s on her own.

 

~~~

 

So Dr. Gorin came to visit, and Erin finally let Holtzy metaphorically drop, significantly less gently than Abby had requested, but Erin was probably always going to make a botch of that. Erin tells Abby she’s going home, and Holtz has disappeared upstairs.

What’s important here is that Erin said that they weren't dating, and Holtzmann heard it, and now everything is settled, and Abby can go upstairs and see if the poor kid needs a pizza, or some tungsten, or something.

She makes it to the lab, but she can’t find Holtz. It’s like a warehouse up here, a big open floor with nearly every bit of floorspace covered with piles that rival Patty’s books in their irrational organization, only Holtz’s stuff is comprised of varyingly hazardous materials.

She’s peering behind a pile of old computer monitors that Holtzmann likes to cannibalize when she’s frustrated when Abby simultaneously snags her shirt on a circuit board and hears voices coming from across the room. 

Not nearly far _enough_ across the room, because now that she’s trapped and listening, she can hear every single word.

“So what, that didn’t count?”

“Well, we never - and _you -_ ”

“So this doesn't count, this...how exactly are you quantifying this, Erin?"

“I mean, we haven't _been_ on a date.”

“ _Ohh_. We need to introduce an environment change. Oh, I getcha. I gotcha, Gilbert. So, you want me to wine you... _dine_ you?”

“Holtz, I thought...I thought maybe it was a one time thing?”

“A three time thing.”

“Okay, regardless! We didn't, you know...hammer out any details or - why are you making that noise?”

“Oh my god, Erin. Say hammer again.”

“What, why, no -”

“How about wrench?”

At this point there is a pause, and Abby wishes fervently that maybe she’s gone suddenly deaf when Holtzmann speaks again, in a much lower voice.

“I think I could show you a good time.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

At this point, Kevin comes upstairs asking why their logo has a red sash on it (and is it for a pageant?), so Abby escapes, pretty scathed, having heard things she’ll never be able to bleach out of her mind, but hell, at least she has her answer.

 

~~~

 

Well, maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe they could balance each other out a little. Or at least Erin will probably grab Holtz by the overalls to keep her from running into traffic, if Holtz has her dance pants on while going down the street.

Not that that’s happened.

“It’s definitely happened,” Abby tells Patty, who just starts talking about John Alexander Kennedy.

 

~~~

 

There’s not really an ending to this, except for maybe that a few weeks later they’re on a bust, and Erin gets slimed like there’s no tomorrow. A second after the stream stops Holtz dives in front of Erin dramatically, yelling “nooooo” and spreading her arms like she’s taking a bullet.

Maybe a teaspoon worth of ectoplasm lands on Holtzmann’s jumpsuit. She lands hard on her back on the floor and grins up at Erin while Abby and Patty wrestle the spurned sailor or whatever this one is into the containment unit.

“You about done?” says Erin.

“No,” says Holtz. “I’d do it again. I'd do it a _thousand times_ , Erin.”

Erin doesn’t respond, but stretches out her slimy arm and hauls Holtzmann up once she grips her wrist. Keeps holding onto her wrist. Does not let go of it.

“Are you _both_ done?” asks Patty. Erin smiles. Holtzmann smiles.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Everything sucks now but there's still fic.


End file.
